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Hunting for a Mazda? Chat up an Online Personal Shopper

Tired of hopping from dealership to dealership in a time-wasting effort to find the perfect car at the perfect price? Well, Mazda is attempting to ease your pain with the introduction of its new online-based Mazda Shopping Assistant program.By logging onto www.MazdaUSA.com and clicking a shopping tools link, consumers can now engage in live Web-chat sessions with Mazda Personal Shoppers. Though these Personal Shoppers can't help you with the latest seasonal fashions (or can they?), they will be happy to assist you with configuring a vehicle, picking a dealership, checking the inventories of different dealerships, and getting an actual quote directly from the dealership of choice, according to Mazda. Once the customer is ready to purchase the car, the Shoppers can help set up an appointment and even work out financing.The program allows the Shoppers to work as an online middleman between the dealer and customer until a price is agreed upon, and then a final appointment is set up for paperwork and vehicle delivery. With the car-buying public increasingly turning to the Internet to research and purchase vehicles, this program is a logical step in the evolution of car buying. Mazda is clearly seeking to capitalize on the approximately 1.5 million visitors coming to its consumer site each month as well as its status as an automaker with one of the youngest U.S. customer bases in the business.By combining the steps of model selection, price negotiation, and financing into one continuous process, Mazda's online program hopes to more quickly connect consumers to dealers while making the process much more painless for all parties. If this program -- which Mazda is billing as the first of its kind -- takes off, other manufacturers are likely to take notice and follow suit. Stay tuned.;